“The Pennsylvania Dental Association (PDA) and its spokesman, dentist David Tecosky, turned a blind eye to scientific facts and the medical credo ‘First, do no harm’ with their August 29 press release on smokeless tobacco (‘Tobacco: Smokeless Does Not Equal Harmless’).
*** Pennsylvania Dentist ***
In a recent newspaper article of a dentist in Pennsylvania, Dr. Barry J. Boran, he states that, “Smokeless tobacco is even worse than cigarettes.” The text of this interview is noted below:
Americans need to wise up soon — 04/15/2007
EXCERPT FROM ARTICLE:
According to American Cancer Society statistics, some 30,000 Americans annually are diagnosed with mouth and throat cancers and nearly 8,000 die from the disease………… Smokeless tobacco is even worse than cigarettes, according to Dr. Barry J. Boran, a Minersville dentist who was interviewed for Friday’s Health page feature. “Smokeless tobacco has a 50 percent higher concentration of cancer-causing agents than cigarettes, he said.”
Since Dr. Boran’s statement completely contradicts the conclusions of several harm reduction researchers such as Dr. Michael Kunze of Austria (www.nicotineinstitute.com), Dr. Brad Rodu at the University of Louisville (www.smokersonly.org), and Jeff Stier, Esq. at the American Council on Science and Health (please see the article below) we would encourage readers of this newsletter to review the work of these researchers to learn how inaccurate Dr. Boran’s claim is regarding the relative risks of various tobacco products.
Pennsylvania Dental Association’s Health Advice Decidedly Unhealthy, Says Renowned Tobacco Expert
02 Sep 2006
The following is a statement by Dr. Brad Rodu, oral pathologist and professor of medicine at the University of Louisville and an endowed chair in tobacco harm reduction research:
“The Pennsylvania Dental Association (PDA) and its spokesman, dentist David Tecosky, turned a blind eye to scientific facts and the medical credo ‘First, do no harm’ with their August 29 press release on smokeless tobacco (‘Tobacco: Smokeless Does Not Equal Harmless’).
“The PDA was wrong to imply that smokeless tobacco is just as dangerous as cigarettes. In fact, smokeless does not cause lung cancer, heart disease or emphysema. A 2004 National Cancer Institute-funded study concluded that ‘[smokeless] products pose a substantially lower risk to the user than do conventional cigarettes. This finding raises ethical questions concerning whether it is inappropriate and misleading for government officials or public health experts to characterize [smokeless] products as comparably dangerous with cigarette smoking.’
“The PDA was wrong to state that ‘smokeless tobacco consumers actually have a higher risk of developing oral cancer than cigarette smokers.’ The exact opposite is true: smokeless users have less than one-half the oral cancer risk of smokers (American Journal of the Medical Sciences). And a recent study from the American Cancer Society (in the journal Cancer Causes and Control) showed no oral cancer risk among smokeless users.
“The PDA was wrong to compare nicotine absorption levels in smokeless products and cigarettes. That exercise is irrelevant, since nicotine isn’t the culprit in smokers’ deaths. It’s the smoke that causes the bulk of tobacco-related disease and death. The fact is that nicotine can be used as safely as caffeine, another widely consumed addictive drug.
“That is why the growing consensus among health professionals is that smokers should switch (permanently, if necessary) to smoke-free sources of nicotine, including smokeless tobacco products.
“The PDA’s statements are irresponsible and dangerous because they could lead smokeless users to switch to cigarettes. The PDA is continuing a tobacco prohibitionist tradition of denying smokers lifesaving information about safer tobacco products. They do this in the supposed cause of protecting children.
“Tobacco initiation by young people should be stopped in its tracks, but the relative safety of smokeless isn’t a children’s issue. The 8 million Americans who will die from smoking-related illness in the next 20 years are not children today; they are adults, 35 years and older. Preventing youth access to tobacco is vitally important, but that effort should never be used as a smokescreen to condemn smoking parents and grandparents to premature death.
“If the Pennsylvania Dental Association intends to uphold its mission – ‘to serve the public, improve their health, [and] promote the art and science of dentistry’ — it should immediately retract its ill-advised press release and acknowledge the facts about a very real and valuable tobacco harm reduction strategy, namely, saving smokers’ lives by switching them to significantly less harmful smokeless tobacco products.”
For more information on tobacco harm reduction, visit http://www.SmokersOnly.org.
Dr. Brad Rodu
http://www.SmokersOnly.org
http://www.SmokersOnly.org
